long legs got tangled as he bounced against the doorframe on his way out the open door. Slaughter hit on his stomach, sliding and rolling almost to the edge of the precipice. He got a vague impression of the car's underside, rising near him as the front wheels pitched over the grassy edge.
He got up cursing his ruined shirt and spitting weed seed, and hobbled to the verge in time to see the Ford rise into view twenty meters below as it began its second roll, now moving faster on the slick dry grasses, finally beginning multiple flips, shedding small parts in midair. Even after he could no longer see it. Slaughter listened to its progress with satisfaction. It took a good fifteen seconds before the sound of the last impact died away.
Moments later, with Sorel in the Chevy, he craned his neck to see his handiwork. 'Can't even see it for-the brush,' he said, and spat again. 'Good thing our duds are in the trunk; I purely trashed a good shirt — and damn near my hide in the bargain.'
'With the bonus I have in mind, you can buy many shirts,' said Sorel, turning the Chevy's mapfiche toward himself. 'Now get some sleep. We have a long drive over back roads before we reach the old interstate highway. You can take your turn then.' Not once, then or later, did Felix Sorel show the slightest remorse over Marianne Placidas. She had been a tool cheaply bought and cheaply expended.
Despite his bruises. Slaughter exulted in a job well done. Before racking the seat back, he saw the deep ravine once more from a turn near the blacktop road. He could see no sign of the Ford. From their high vantage point, it was impossible to see the slight depression where the car had ended its first roll, where its lone occupant had tumbled from the open door into high grass before the car continued its headlong plunge.
Ten minutes later, Slaughter was enjoying the sleep of the innocent and Sorel was figuring their timetable to Portland. Several kilometers behind them a Toyota Scrambler howled up Dead Indian Road, driven with the happy abandon of a maniac or of a man who knew every pothole in the road between Ashland and the high mountain lakes.
Keith Ames had the Toyota's top down to savor all the glory of a fall day and scanned the mountainside above to avoid being surprised by a car coming his way. Blasting along at this pace, he might have passed Sorel eventually, had he not spotted movements in the tall grass high on a ravine, above and to his left. It was some distance from the main road, but when snow began to dust the flanks of Grizzly Peak nearby, Ames would be hunting blacktail in these parts. He slowed the roadster, expecting to see antlers emerge against the sky. What he saw made him forget venison. Like many ex-racing drivers, Ames kept a remarkable memory for the features of roads he flogged. He knew that a path that was almost an access road fed into the blacktop a couple of turns above. 'Why the hell,' he asked himself as he flicked the gear lever and surged the Toyota forward, 'would a woman be crawling up that ravine?'
He would not have much of the answer for some time. He would, however, spend his next twenty minutes driving as he had not driven since dueling a prototype tree harvester against a similar machine driven by a killer, years before. He saw as he scooped the woman into his arms that she was delirious and near death. He buckled her in, trying not to look at the ruined face, hit the blacktop with a squall of rubber, and ignored his usual caution when driving with a passenger because this one was bleeding all over herself and might not live even if he broke all records down Dead Indian Road.
He broke the records, skirting Ashland en route to the city hospital, hanging his inside front wheel in thin air over the verge at every turn because, with its stiffened suspension, the Toyota had enough chassis lean in one-gee sideloads to keep that wheel aloft. On one long straight, he used his radiophone for the emergency freq and had time, before wailing the Toyota through the next bend, to tell them the bare essentials. Still, Marianne Placidas was more dead than alive as Ames burst into the emergency entrance with his gory burden, shouting for his friend, surgeon Dominic Ewald.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Quantrill knew he was in for either an ass chew or a peace offering when, after being summoned to Stearns, he spent only a few moments waiting in the rec room. Either way, he'd be paid for the trip to Junction. And these days he was actually beginning to think about saving these extra dollops of cash. That worried him, because a conservative man tended to be overcautious, and too much caution could kill you just as surely as foolhardiness.
'Take a load off,' Stearns told him as he entered, waving him to a chair. 'Coffee?'
At Quantrill's nod, the chief deputy poured it himself and brought it, taking the adjoining leather-backed chair and placing a slender faxbook in his own lap. It was standard issue, with a case ID on its cover.
Steams occupied himself with his coffee in the old Texas way, dribbling some into a saucer to cool it, blowing into the puddle, pouring it expertly back into the cup. Then, over the rim of his cup, he astonished Quantrill by smiling. It was a warm, easy smile full of informality and welcome; a politician's smile.
'No point beating around the bush, Quantrill; I was wrong about you.'
Ted Quantrill smiled back and sipped; waited for the other boot to fall. Against his backside, maybe.
'I read your report on old Placidas's statement. Must've been a nasty time.'
'For the judge, especially,' Quantrill said, and waited.
'So I gather. Never met the old fella myself,' said Steams, his eyes meeting Quantrill's steadily, 'but it's a hell of a shock to find he was on the other side. The point is, you did a fine job and you probably deserve a commendation, I listened to the tape,' he added, tapping the faxbook in his lap. 'There are only a couple of little things I thought we might go over.'
Stearns smiled again and flicked the faxbook's cover open, dialing medium magnification on its display so that he would not need reading glasses. 'I see you never read him his rights.'
'He waived 'em,' said Quantrill. 'Hell, he was a judge.'
'No big deal; wherever Placidas is, we can't indict him anyhow. But in the future, do it. Just for me, okay?'
Quantrill nodded.
'Second, it seems the judge had quite an audience for his true confessions. Try not to let that happen again.'
Quantrill thought it over: realized that old Placidas's revelations, might mark all those who heard them. 'I can do that,' he said.
'Okay. I mean, how many people heard Tony Plass say that Mul Garner hung one on us?'
'Two or three, I — Mul Garner
'You got it on tape, remember? Placidas said the contraband went through Garner Ranch, and somebody says, 'Mul Garner?' and Placidas says, 'He hung one on us,' and then apologizes to his daughter.'
'Damn if I remember that,' said Quantrill, who had only an average memory for dialogue. 'I thought he said it was the son. Jerome Garner,' he added as if that explained much.
Steams repeated the name contemptuously. 'A Saturday night hero, I hear tell. I can only go on hearsay, but Jerome Garner doesn't strike me as a gang organizer. Anyhow, Tony Plass didn't say anything remotely like 'Jerome.' Listen to it yourself,' he urged, and punched an instruction into the faxbook's keyboard.
The digital recording, as well as photographs and written reports, lay stored in the faxbook for later study. Quantrill heard a soft thrum of prairie breeze, remembered squatting beside the old man while Jess Marrow hovered near: heard
Placidas say, 'Conduit always maintained through Garner Ranch.' Then Jess, unbelieving: 'Mul Garner?'
And then, so soft as to be nearly inaudible, Tony Plass: 'The young one onus.' Or perhaps, 'The young one's on us.' It was hard to say for sure. Stearns stopped the tape and let his eyebrows ask the question.
But Quantrill's memory was tripped by the recording. 'I'm sorry, Steams, but the man said, 'The young one.' I don't remember that last couple of words.'
Marv Stearns tipped his palm toward the faxbook and shrugged. 'It's your tape, Quantrill. 'But he doesn't say anything that sounds like 'Jerome.'
